More than three decades after the annulment of the 12 June 1993 presidential election plunged Nigeria into a pro-democracy struggle, filmmaker Ose Oyamendan revisited the life and political legacy of the late Moshood Abiola in a new documentary, “MKO.”
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Mr Oyamendan premiered the documentary on 1 October at the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts in Iganmu, Lagos, as part of activities marking Nigeria’s 66th Independence Anniversary.
President Bola Tinubu, Senate President Godswill Akpabio, Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and the President’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, and others attended the event.
The documentary entered cinemas nationwide on 2 October, taking viewers through Mr Abiola’s life, political ambitions and legacy while revisiting the military government’s controversial decision to annul the 1993 election.
In this exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES, Mr Oyamendan discusses the motivation behind the documentary, his decision to feature Mr Abiola’s eldest son, Kola Abiola, and the accounts of prominent figures who featured in the documentary.
MKO (PHOTO CREDIT_ Ose Oyamendan)
PT: What inspired you to make this documentary, and why did you choose the documentary format rather than a biopic featuring an actor portraying MKO Abiola?
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Oyamendan: I think the first reason we had to do it, or why I wanted to do it, was to fill a gap in our history. There is a huge gap, and many people, especially young people, know very little about our history. As a result, many misconceptions exist in public life. So, it was very important to tell this story and get it right.
I did not train as a documentary filmmaker. I went to film school to study filmmaking, and documentaries are one aspect of it. But when you tell a story like this, you have to rely on facts. I wanted to tell the story with evidence so we wouldn’t be interpreting events, but simply telling the story as it happened.
That is why making it a documentary was important. When you make a biopic, you often end up editorialising. I did not want that. We may do that later, but for now, it is important to put this story into the public consciousness exactly as it happened.
PT: Are you saying that if you had made it a film with actors playing the roles, some of the facts might have been distorted?
Oyamendan: When you make a biopic, you need some artistic licence to interpret how a person looks and talks. You rearrange history. This film is about more than MKO Abiola; it is about the crisis in Nigeria, and Abiola is our entry point into that story. That became the film’s focus. When you want to make a biopic about him, how do you begin? You have to take an angle, and we chose the political crisis angle. All of this is based on facts.
Oyamendan: We shot our first lens in November 2013. So, it took 13 years to get to this premiere, but we’ve done it. We could have shown it in the last four or five months.
PT: Why did you wait this long to tell this story?
Oyamendan: When we jumped into it, I thought it was a great opportunity to start because some of the people involved were getting old, while others were passing away. It took us that long to get started because I wanted to involve everybody, including the Abiola family. It was important to me to get Kola Abiola involved because, apart from being Abiola’s eldest child, he was actively involved in the campaign.
Once I got him on board, we started. We started in a rush and ran out of money. We didn’t secure much funding, and much of the challenge involved raising money to finish the project and getting key figures to speak towards the end.
PT: Did the documentary take a different direction from what you initially planned as you uncovered more of the story?
Oyamendan: It’s funny. My friend Azaria just sent me a treatment I shared with him about 17 years ago, in 2009, when I was only beginning to think about the project. It was about the same thing I set out to do, but the journey was different, what we discovered was different, and I learned as I went along.
It was very interesting because most of the key characters didn’t know the whole story. None of them knew everything. They all wanted to ask, “Well, did you find out?” I kept telling them, “You’ll see the movie.” There were a lot of surprises.
PT: I know you partnered with Nile; what informed your decision to take the film to cinemas?
Oyamendan: I mean, this is how films work. We wanted as many people as possible to see it. For me, as a cinephile, the usual process is to release a film in cinemas first and then make it available on streaming platforms. Streaming comes later because some people think, ‘Oh, we should start with streaming.’
ALSO READ; EXCLUSIVE: What my father told me about MKO Abiola, money, power – Otedola
I don’t think streaming platforms are paying a lot of money for African films at the moment, anyway. It’s important to follow the process step by step. That’s why we’ve taken this approach, and hopefully, the film will end up on a streaming platform at some point.
PT: How much did it cost to make the documentary, and did you receive any funding?
Oyamendan: The movie cost over a million dollars to make. We secured some private funding, but a lot of it came through gap financing. So, we owe a lot of money. It’s our film, but we don’t own it outright. We have to pay that money back, and we’re hoping we can raise the funds.
PT: Before MKO, what other projects had you worked on?
Oyamendan: I’ve worked on commercials, producing films and directing a lot of series. However, this is the first major project I’ve done in Nigeria. I mean, I made a short documentary about President Buhari and worked on several other projects, but this is the first big one. This is probably the first major documentary to be shown in a Nigerian cinema.
I’ve worked on TV series and some major web series. I also worked on Big Brother; they called it Obama at one point. However, the first major film I worked on was in the Middle East. It’s called As What I Remember? or Other Voices? I’m not sure which title it goes by, and I think it’s on Amazon. We filmed it in Israel and Palestine. It told the story of friends in Gaza who were friends with people in southern Israel, which is at the heart of the conflict and war. We filmed in both Gaza and Israel. That was my first really big project and probably the one that announced my arrival in the industry.
I don’t know; perhaps there have been one or two others. But this isn’t just a documentary like the ones you’ve seen excerpts from. It’s more like the story of our lives, and that makes it different. In many countries around the world, documentaries have had a transformative impact when shown in cinemas. I hope this one does well because, if it does, it will show others that they can do the same and give them the confidence to try.
Oyamendan: I was both the director and the producer.